The Moon Rises

Session - 2/3/2012

Qaliwin's journal, Vol. 1, Entry 3

3

FEB/12

Allow me to begin properly.

I have reached a milestone in my life. Brother Clement has allowed me to meet the Memnushan Emperor, Father Tasil. I feel as if I can die happy, if only I could learn to channel the spells I wish to channel through my blade. But more on that later.

We met the crusade shortly after my last entry into the journal. The Holy Crusade against the Auk invasion force. We simply stumbled upon it. I mean, we were attempting to reach the Auk lines to reach Kyranok, but I had not anticipated to meet up with the Crusade. When we first approached the Crusade, Byron ran off ahead, straight through the army camp and into the woods just beyond. I made camp for us within the confines of the Church of Metria while Brother Clement met with the other brothers of JADO.

A while later, Brother Clement returned. He was accompanied by the Emperor himself. I write this now, and seeing my words does not seem to appropriately convey the emotion. Hang on. Let me try harder.

His Eminence, the Blessed Emperor Father Tasil walked into MY camp and spoke. TO. ME.

Did that work? I hope so. I can’t try any harder.

He spoke true words to all of us, as if he could see our futures, our paths laid before us as if he were reading off a page. His insight, his magnanimity, all much more impressive than the stories about him throughout the Empire had ever mentioned. One of the things he mentioned was that Byron was in need, and that we would need to help him.

Oh yeah

And then the Emperor gave Lorien Nightwalker his SWORD.

Said we would need it. With that, we rushed to Byron’s aid. All of us took to horses, except Brother Clement, who stayed with the Emperor.

Now, we had seen this battle daemon before. It flew overhead a few weeks before finding the Crusade. However, on this day we rode into the wood as night fell and faced the daemon head on. As we arrived we saw Byron retching towards on the ground. He was also growing into a very odd shape. Lorien, our night-walking Dwarf, and I charged the daemon while the rest sought to Byron. I attempted my magic but the beast was swift. Guislane was able to strike the thrice headed beast with a bolt of lightning from the sky, slowing it down. Lorien struck true with the Emperor’s Blade, allowing a massive lightning bolt, sent by Guislane, to strike the beast at the conflux of its’ three necks, putting the mighty, evil creature down. Once it was down it was taken into a black hole that opened up in reality, save for some of the creature’s blood. Some of this blood got onto the deer that may or may not have been Byron, and it stained its fur black. This blood became as droplets and floated up into the night sky. As I turned back to the scene with Byron I was shocked. Byron had become a deer, still bleeding from the stomach and neck. Our druid companion sought to the wounds of the deer and we all thought about what to do with the situation. Guislane went off to meditate. Lorien and myself attempted to work with the druid to see how to move the deer, assuming that the deer was still Sir Byron is some way, shape, or form.

It was in this time that Lucas came riding up to our group, having missed all the action. It was at this time that I let my sight slip into the ether to attempt to take stock of the situation with Byron. I noticed a ring upon Lucas’ finger that was so powerful that I didn’t even notice at first that magic had been trapped into a ring. I attempted to question Lucas, but he seemed more interested in Guislane.

Back and forth, in and out of the brush went our party for about an hour, until Milo decided that he was going to cast a ritual, like the great masters back at Red Rock used to talk about. Here, in the wilds. Now, I would be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t believe it would work, because magic is everything and in all things, so it HAD to work, right? This ritual would, apparently, transfer the curse from Bryon to Milo, and Milo spoke about his Elven soul being able to reincarnate. I don’t know if he was right, but Guislane and Lucas seemed confident it would happen, so I went along with it.

Oh, and did I mention that Guislane grew horns? From his forehead? When I asked why, he said, “I accepted my heritage” and he would say no more.

Now, the rest of this entry is going to seem very glazed over and nonchalant. However, this is only due to a bit of a numbing due to the content of what I will write and how I am still not over the sheer impact of the magnitude of the last two weeks.

Milo began the ritual, and has he did (assisted by Guislane and myself) a chanting began in the woods. A dark, twisted chanting that Lorien told us came from a gathering of wolves beginning to circle us. We continued, resolute in our cause, with the ritual. As the ritual culminated, the chanting ceased, and Byron stood once more a man, while Milo transformed into the deer. However, the deer’s black spot (from the daemon blood) melted off of the deer, or Milo, I can’t tell. The more important thing that happened after that was that the blood that had rained upwards now rained down from the sky. The ground was caving under the weight of the blood so that the blood pooled on the ground. The chanting, the wicked, dark chanting began again, and I rushed to move everyone away from this spot. Lorien closed his eyes and told us that the chanting was coming from the black blood in the ground. I wanted nothing more with this place. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream, but there was no way that I would do that with people’s lives on the line. We mounted what horses were left and had not run away from the daemon and ran. On the way out people could be seen in the woods watching us leave. Guislane later told us that he spotted a wolf-man among the people.

Byron went crazy as we returned to the Crusade’s camp. The beautiful Dame Templar I met when we made camp with the rest of the Metrians eventually tackled Sir Byron as he attempted to run through the camp, which was absolutely hysterical from my point of view. I mean, it was terrible, thinking about what he must be going through with his awakening being so late in life, but watching a grown man run around without pants on and get tackled by a sexy warrior woman is just great any day of the week.

When the rush of battle finally fell from our minds, we laid our heads to rest in the tavern tent among the encampment.

And I woke up. The tavern looked as if it was years and years old, covered in cobwebs and dust and decay. No one else, save the dwarf, seemed phased by this. Until Lucas turned to me and said.

“Qaliwin, we are in Fay.”

Fay. The world of fairies. The world that parents tell their children about to scare them into obedience.

Fay

That’s it. I was about to lose it. What seemed to be a moth landed on my shoulder, and after flicking it off once I noticed, after it returned again, that it was a small person. A fairy. I lost my mind. Lucas had to take me through the rest of our journey. He drew a door in reality which we walked through bringing us to the court of summer where we met with queen titania the queen of the seelie court and lucas made a cup and the dwarf made a bench and the queen turned my snow bolt into flowers and then glitter and then a bunch of things came in and titania talked to me about magic and fay and about how dreams come and then lucas asked lorien about his blonde hair and he told him about the nightwalker business with being abletowalkatnightandnotbeaffectedbythemoonlightorpossessedbydaemonsandthatswhyotherdwarveshatehimandtheotherslike
himandlucashasasonandawifeandtheringonhisfingerishiswifesexhusbandwhoisaringbecausehecheatedonherand…

…whoa. I am still in shock about being there. We got back safe, back to the tavern. While in Fay, Guislane and Lucas met with a goat man who apparently was the reincarnation of their old friend Jaques. He was going to appear near a treeline, so we went to speak to the Emperor about him. The guards told us to find him near the edge of the camp because he wanted to “look around”. I knew right away that the Emperor knew what was going on, so we ran out to meet him. We found Jaques, but not before the Emperor did. Lucas covered his goat legs and horns with pants and a hat and we had a conversation with the Emperor again, this time though the Emperor was much more cordial. He even cursed in front of us, it was divine.

Until a boy with burnt out eyes appeared in a field behind us. He then disappeared.

Guislane apparently knew this small boy, a child named Jacob who their inquisitor friend had burned the eyes out of because a daemon was in his eyes.

Have I entirely made it clear how absolutely insane things have gotten in the last two weeks? HAVE I?

Anyway, our march towards the Auk line continues, and I have finally figured out how to channel. My theories were correct, like I knew they were. Milo condemned me, but I knew it.

Lucas, however, just mentioned how he is on some sort of test, a trial that may kill him or make him ascend to another level in which he won’t reincarnate. To be the icing on the cake.